exist. CCI has been built, piece
by piece, by creative academic
colleagues, supported by donors
who are willing to make long-term
investment decisions for a cause that
they believe in passionately.”
Those philanthropists include the
MAVA Foundation and the Arcadia
Fund, which together will help to
finance the redevelopment of a citycentre building to house 500 experts
from 10 conservation organisations
and six University departments.
As Mike Rands explains, “Donors
have started giving us money for a
conservation campus – a physical
manifestation of our vision for
innovative conservation collaboration.
You could argue that, in an age of
fantastic electronic communications,
you don’t need to physically bring
people together. But in practice, there
is lots of evidence showing that to
break down barriers and build trust,
there’s no substitute for bringing people
together under one roof.”

The building is also a way of raising
the profile of conservation and fostering
interdisciplinary research, bringing
academics from many areas together
with practitioners to address seemingly
intractable problems.
“Bringing these kinds of people
together is where the novelty and
innovation come from,” Rands says.
“In the past, conservationists have
tended to talk only to one another.
The same is true of businesspeople and
economists. The way natural scientists
and social scientists conduct research is
fundamentally different, so when you
first put them together, they may find
it alien. As they start talking about a
common concern, they realise they have
different perspectives that, if added
together, can generate interesting new
ways of thinking, new ideas and new
solutions to some of these problems.
“Perhaps it will be a historian or
a professor of physics who comes up
with something those of us who work
in this field have never thought about.
40

Cambridge gives us that opportunity,
and that’s one of the reasons CCI is
so exciting.”
And Rands hopes that establishing
a global hub for conservation in
Cambridge will make it easier to engage
with visiting political and business
leaders. “Cambridge attracts many
leaders – people who were educated
here or come as visitors. If we have a
conservation centre at the heart of the
University, in the centre of the city,
these people will come into contact with
these ideas even if they had no previous
interest in conservation,” he explains.
Conservation challenges

The new campus and Sutherland’s
horizon-scanning work are only two
of CCI’s current priorities. The others
– learning and leadership, and research
for policy and practice – are also
already under way. In 2006, a donation
from Cambridge alumni Jamie and
Jane Wilson allowed the creation of the
Moran Professorship of Conservation

and Development to focus on the social
causes of environmental threats.
As Jamie Wilson explains, the gift
was partly motivated by an awareness
of what was already happening.
“Cambridge was the ideal place to
bring together the social and natural
sciences to look at conservation,” he
says. “It had a critical mass of expertise
across all the relevant disciplines,
and the University was already in the
vanguard of both conservation science
and the social sciences. Environmental
challenges call for innovative and
intelligent solutions. Cambridge
provides this creativity and excellence.”
In 2009, CCI launched its Masters
in Conservation Leadership thanks to
funding from the MAVA Foundation.
Rands says: “It’s like an MBA in
conservation – learning the business
as you work as a leader in this field,
whether that’s in non-governmental
organisations, business or government.”
As an interdisciplinary initiative,
CCI poses challenges to public

funding – which is another reason
why philanthropy is so critical.
Rands believes donors interested in
conservation understand the need to
think more strategically about solving
global problems.
“Far-sighted donors are concerned
about the way the planet is changing,”
he explains. “They see it as a
fundamental global challenge that
requires new ways of looking at things,
and bringing together people from very
different backgrounds to do so, which
is what Cambridge is doing.
“If you’re a foundation that supports
conservation practice, you might
contribute funds to saving rainforest
X or species Y. But we’re not doing
that – we’re providing information
to shape and inform those activities.
Hopefully, they’ll see the value of
investing in CCI because what will
come out of this will potentially save
many more forests or species.”
It’s an approach that the MAVA
Foundation certainly supports. MAVA’s
41

president, André Hoffmann, says: “The
big challenge facing humanity today is
overconsumption. But we are playing
at the margins. We need new ways
of dealing with it – CCI is a beginning
for us to get involved in this more
holistic approach.”
Attracted to Cambridge because of
its concentration of NGOs – including
several that his father, MAVA founder
Luc Hoffmann, has close links to – and
his longstanding involvement with
Professor Tim Clutton-Brock’s Large
Animal Research Group, Hoffmann
shares CCI’s commitment to doing
things differently.
He says: “We have moved in the
conservation arena away from doing
just biodiversity – saving species and
protecting areas. The global challenges
we face mean changing humanity’s
attitudes. This needs new science.
Supporting a building is a departure
for us: a conscious desire to help big,
transformative projects, rather than
more piecemeal ones.”